Madhav Kidao and Brando Posocco, the founders of London-based architecture and design studio Nebbia are used to thinking monumentally. Among their works stands out a cathedral-like installation made of stacking blocks for Coachella in 2024, or an aluminium pavilion floating over the fountain at the V&A’s John Madejski Garden for London Design Festival.
Their latest commission, as part of Paererewā, a New Zealand national initiative that aims at creating 1,000 works that will last 1,000 years, has led them to rethink their practice’s propensity for monumentality, through time and material.
What is Paererewā? Creating 1,000 works for 1,000 years
The initiative is the brainchild of Still, a company led by Japanese entrepreneur Hideaki Fukutake who gathered a group of like-minded companies that together work towards a long-term plan to enhance local communities through culture and art. Each piece (incorporating sculpture and seating) is commissioned to be a threshold between the mundanity of everyday life and an opportunity for deeper reflection.
The second to be completed, Nebbia’s Interlude is installed on a cliff at Jardine Park, in the south of Aotearoa, with views across Lake Whakatipu and The Remarkables mountain range. When tasked with the commission, Kidao and Posocco had to dig deeper into the idea of longevity through design and architecture.
Our first thought was to comprehend what 1,000 years means, both anthropologically and ecologically
‘Our first thought was to comprehend what 1,000 years means, both anthropologically and ecologically,’ they recall. ‘New Zealand was uninhabited by humans 1,000 years ago, with the first people arriving only around 800 years ago. Would it still be inhabited in the next 1,000 years? If not, who or what are we designing for?’ The questions led them to design a portal-like sculpture, that can be climbed and sat on: ‘a place for two strangers to serendipitously meet and share knowledge, wisdom or simply an emotional connection.’
The sculpture is made of locally-sourced basalt bluestone, from nearby Timaru. The practical part of the project formed yet another conundrum, as both the millennium element of the project and the seismic conditions of the region (‘forces beyond our control’) led them to imagine a piece evolving over time.
Stone taps into a conception of time beyond the human-centred viewpoint
‘We were never tied to the idea that it needed to exist in the same state for 1,000 years,’ they observed. ‘It could grow, degrade or fragment. This led us to research growing something, but we discovered that no native plant species lives for 1,000 years. Stone taps into a conception of time beyond the human-centred viewpoint. Many of our projects explore the idea of impermanence: everything came from somewhere and will become something else, and our interaction with it is fleeting, be it one day or 1,000 years.’